Anatomically correct attachment of soft tissue to bone is essential to the healthy and effective operation of many musculoskeletal joints and systems. By way of illustrative example, medial meniscus posterior root attachment is essential in providing evenly distributed hoop stresses in meniscal cartilage and thereby enabling healthy load-sharing across a knee. As such, a detachment of a medial meniscus at its posterior root or a radial tear in the meniscus may damage circumferential integrity of a meniscus and lead to rapid progression of arthritis. A medial posterior root repair radial tear repair, therefore, may be useful to improve medial compartment load distribution and help restore joint mechanics. Medial meniscus repair that includes routing of repair devices such as sutures through a trans-tibial channel is known in the prior art. However, prior art disclosures do not provide for sufficiently effective methods and devices to reattach a meniscus or other soft tissue in a controlled and reproducible manner. Many prior art repair methods, for example, only provide for attaching a meniscus with a single suture, for attaching a meniscus from a single orientation, or for attaching a meniscus with multiple sutures that are dependent on one another such that failure of one suture would lead to the failure or ineffectiveness of another suture.
It would be advantageous to provide methods and devices of repair that use multiple repair devices such as sutures to independently apply tension to the meniscus at multiple locations. Some improved methods and devices may control the meniscus relative to the tibia to which the meniscus is to be reattached by separately tensioning repair devices such as sutures attached to the meniscus at multiple locations. Where multiple attachment locations are oriented to provide for opposing or partially opposing orientations of attachment, independent tensioning of repair devices such as sutures of improved systems may provide for selectable positioning of the reattached meniscus relative to a tibia. Improved methods and devices may also provide for attachments of repair devices with repair devices that are independent of one another such that a failure of one repair device would not contribute to the failure of another repair device. Some improved methods and devices may provide for creation of multiple channels through which one or more dependent or independent repair devices may be passed when attached to a meniscus to be repaired.